K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

Everything in threes

Up front, of course, a quick apology for the lack of communication over the last few days. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were holidays here, and I took a small but well-earned vacation.

So for that same reason I have little tell on the Linux front. Most of my time was spent sightseeing and very little time — in fact, no time at all — was spent in front of a computer. Very pleasant, in one way.

I can tell you though that the Sotec desktop I took in a few months ago has found a new home. The new owner is a young married couple starting out on The Road of Life, and looking for something to check e-mails and polish resumes while they get accustomed to a new home. No doubt in the future it will be replaced by a newer, flashier machine, but for now it should find some use.

I split the installation on that machine before I sent it out the door. If you recall, it relied on Windows 98 as a “legal” operating system, but I did little other than set up the screen resolution and get the network card going.

The other half is pure Ubuntu 9.04, which would be impossible to use on a 600Mhz machine except that I installed the LXDE desktop and triggered it on bootup. It at least links the person behind the keyboard to the applications available, without bogging down the system in the process. Is that so little to ask?

If Lubuntu had matured only a little more, I would have definitely used that instead.

In other, similar news, I made a deal with the coworker who owned the Pavilion, and agreed to swap if for the 600m. The Inspiron is lighter and needs less space, even if it’s nowhere near as fast, has less screen real estate and weaker speakers. The new owner says portability was something the Pavilion lacked, which I would definitely agree with now that it’s back and on my desk … weighing it down considerably.

The bad news in this development is that the Pavilion’s screen hinges have cracked, making the panel flop around like a dying fish. I already popped the bezel open and the plastic braces for the hinge are completely snapped. If I planned on keeping it I would probably buy new hinges and replace them; as it is, I doubt it will be around long enough to make a difference.

The good news — great news, really — is that the 600m’s new owner asked for an Ubuntu-only machine: no dual boot. That came about from knowing that the machine had some flaky behavior when the latest updates to XP were applied, but also because the new owner just wasn’t using Windows … with the only exception being the need to connect to a music player by way of special software (I don’t know what kind of player it is). And a new music player is supposedly on the agenda.

Personally I think that’s great. It’s one more nail in the coffin for Microsoft, and one more example for the Windows muckrakers who still insist, years after Ubuntu stormed the OS landscape, that casual desktop users can’t find a home with Linux. That argument is so tired, it doesn’t even bear refuting.

Otherwise, that’s the situation on the home front. I have the Pavilion on my desk again, the 600m is out of the house and so is the Sotec desktop. And apart from the ever-growing piles of technophiliac crud everywhere, there’s not much else to report. Stay tuned though. :D

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4 thoughts on “Everything in threes”

It’s one more nail in the coffin for Microsoft, and one more example for the Windows muckrakers who still insist, years after Ubuntu stormed the OS landscape, that casual desktop users can’t find a home with Linux. That argument is so tired, it doesn’t even bear refuting.

Hah. I laugh at such claims. As you may or may not have read on my own blog, I recently brought my non-techie Aunt Jean into the Ubuntu fold with basically about a half hour’s worth of training and a little bit of “how do I?” Q&A over the phone, and she’s been running just fine.

If Jean can do without Windows on her computer on a day-to-day basis, I think anyone can.

Like one poster in the thead said, the main problem is ignorance. Most people just don’t know it. Add to that Microsoft’s patent game and the fact that there isn’t ‘one linux’, and people get confused. People don’t like to get confused.